Politics and Society in Scottish Thought by Shinichi Nagao

Author:Shinichi Nagao
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Politics, society, social, philosophy, Scottish Enlightenment, markets, economy, social order, social sciences, morality, market economy, ethics, social order, polity, globalization, Hume, Adam Smith, jurisprudence, James Steuart, political economy, Adam Ferguson, civil society, utopia, Robert Wallace, William Ogilvie, land, property, property rights, Thomas Reid
ISBN: 9781845404086
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

While there is a demand for the trade of any country, inhabitants are always on the increasing hand. This is evident from what has been so often repeated in the first book, and confirmed by thousands of examples. There never was any branch of trade established in any kingdom, province, city, or even village; but such kingdoms, province, etc. increased in inhabitants. While this gradual increase of people is in proportion to the growing demand for hands, the balance between work and demand is exactly kept up: but as all augmentations must at last come to a stop, when this happens, inconveniences must ensue, greater or less, according to the negligence or attention of the statesman, and the violence or suddenness of the revolution.

Chap. XI: Why in Time this Balance is Destroyed

Let us now examine what may be the reason why, in a trading and industrious nation, time necessarily destroys the perfect balance between work and demand.

We have already pointed out one general cause, to wit, the natural stop which must at last be put to augmentations of every kind.

Let us now apply this to circumstances, in order to discover in what manner natural causes operate this stop, either by preventing the increase of work, on one side of the balance, or the increase of demand, on the other. When once we discover how the stop is put to augmentations, we may safely conclude, that the continuation of the same, or similar causes, will soon produce a diminution, and operate a decline.

We have traced the progress of industry, and shown how it goes hand in hand with the augmentation of subsistence, which is the principal allurement to labour. Now the augmentation of food is relative to the soil, and as long as this can be brought to produce, at an expense proportioned to the value of the returns, agriculture, without any doubt, will go forward in every country of industry. But so soon as the progress of agriculture demands an additional expense, which the natural return, at the stated prices of subsistence, will not defray, agriculture comes to a stop, and so would numbers, did not the consequences of industry push them forward, in spite of small difficulties. The industrious then, I say, continue to multiply, and the consequence is, that food becomes scarce, and that the inhabitants enter into competition for it.

This is no contingent consequence, it is an infallible one; because food is an article of the first necessity, and here the provision is supposed to fall short of demand. This raises the profits of those who have food ready to sell; and as the balance upon this article must remain overturned for some time, without the interposition of the statesman, these profits will be consolidated with the price, and give encouragement to a more expensive improvement of the soil. I shall here interrupt the examination of the consequences of this revolution as to agriculture, until I have examined the effects which the rise of the price of food produces on industry, and on the demand for it.

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